gems, jade, jadeite, fei cui, Mesoamerica, Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Mayans, Olmecs, Aztecs, archaeology, history, archaeogemology

Before launching into my paper, I would like to give a sort of prologue which might be titled “The Impact of Olmec Art.” I have been struck by the number of individuals who, after becoming involved with a single fine specimen of Olmec art, spent the rest of their careers as Olmec enthusiasts. One example was Marshall Saville, who became intrigued by the Kunz Axe and spent years looking for related specimens. George Vaillant told me that he first went overboard on the Olmec when the Necaxa jade tigre arrived at the American Museum of Natural History in 1932. He put it in a drawer in his desk and for several weeks used to take it out daily to admire it and to feel it—for there is a tactile as well as a visual appeal to Olmec jades. I cannot say what particular specimen first caught the eye of Miguel Covarrubias, but he early segregated the Olmec style from other aspects of Pre-Columbian art and made it a love affair for life. Many of you here know that Mr. Bliss began his interest in Pre-Columbian art when he acquired in Paris an Olmec jade figure of a standing man. The ultimate result of that one acquisition is the magnificent collection in the adjacent room of this building. I speak with personal feeling on this subject because the bait that hooked me into a career of Olmec research was a small blue jade mask in the Berlin Museum. How many others may have had a similar experience I do not know, but all of these episodes took place before a concept of the Olmec had been clearly formulated, and the appeal was in the art style alone. I think all of us felt that it must have taken a remarkable culture to produce art objects with such a powerful effect and that something should be done to find out more about it.